Part 3 – Translations

Part 3 – Translations

It has been said that many people worked on deciphering the three texts on the Rosetta stone over the years after the stone’s discovery but it was Jean-François Champollion who deciphered the hieroglyphs or top text, in 1822.

Some time after the stone’s discovery the experts had concluded that the stone definitely contained three distinct scripts in possibly three different languages. More recently however that assumption was changed to two different languages, Egyptian and Koine or what today we call “Greek”.

The most incomplete was the top band containing hieroglyphics, the middle band was thought to be an Egyptian script called Demotic, and the bottom band was recognized to be the Koine or what we today call “Greek” script.

By translating the bottom script, experts came to the conclusion that it was a royal decree and assumed that it was written in the languages used in Egypt at the time.

Scholars began to focus on the Demotic script, the middle band, because it was more complete and it looked more like letters than the pictures in the upper band that were hieroglyphics. It looked like a shorthand hieroglyphics that had evolved from an earlier shorthand version of Egyptian called Heiratic script.

The first to attempt making sense of the Demotic script or center text was a French scholar named Silvestre deSacy. He believed he identified the symbols which comprised the word ‘Ptolemy’ and ‘Alexander’ thus, establishing a relationship between the symbols and sounds. Johann Akerblad a Swedish diplomat with knowledge of the Coptic language also made an attempt at translating the center text and identified the words for ‘love,’ ‘temple’ and ‘Greek’. Based on that he concluded that the Demotic script was not only a phonetic script but it was also translatable. Coptic was the language used by the Coptic church of Egypt, an early Christian group who preserved the language which was used as early as the 4th century. Coptic was written with the Koine or whay we today call Greek alphabet but

utilizes seven additional symbols which were found in the Demotic script.

The earliest translation of the Koine or so-called “Greek text” on the Rosetta stone into English was done by Reverend Stephen Weston in London in April 1802 before the Society of Antiquaries. This was about the same time Silvestre deSacy and Thomas Young attempted to decipher the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone. Young was successful in determining that foreign names could not be represented by symbols because symbols are based upon the words used in a given language. Thus, foreign names had to be spelled phonetically. In hieroglyphics there are groups of symbols that are separated from other symbols. These encircled inscriptions are called cartouches. Thomas Young determined that the cartouches were proper names of people who were not Egyptian like the names of Ptolemy and Alexander which in the Koine or so-called Greek language were Ptolemaios and Alexandrus. He successfully deciphered 5 cartouches. His publication on this matter was far reaching.

At about this time a young French historian and linguist named Jean-Francois Champollion was mastering many Eastern languages. In 1807 Champollion went to study for two years with noted French linguist Francois Antoine-Isaac Silvestre deSacy. Later in his career Champollion had compiled a Coptic dictionary and read Thomas Young in 1819. Looking at Young’s writing on the subject of hieroglyphics, he realized that what Young had actually proven was that all of hieroglyphics were phonetic, not just those hieroglyphics that were contained within the cartouches. Utilizing hieroglyphics from an estate at Kingston Lacey in Britain, Champollion correctly identified the names of Cleopatra and Alexandrus and verified Ptolemeus which had previously been identified by Young. He published his results and continued his research. In 1822 new inscriptions from a temple at Abu Simbel on the Nile were introduced into Europe and Champollion had correctly identified the name of the pharaoh who had built the temple. That name was ‘Ramses.’ Utilizing his knowledge of Coptic he continued to successfully translate the hieroglyphics opening up an understanding of the Ancient Egyptians.

In 1814 Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text and went on to work on the hieroglyphic alphabet. During the years 1822 to1824 Champollion greatly expanded on his work, thus becoming known as the translator of the Rosetta stone. Champollion could read Greek and Coptic and was able to figure out what the seven Demotic signs in Coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these Demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

In 1858 the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta stone. Three undergraduate members, Charles R Hale, S Huntington Jones, and Henry Morton, made the translation.

English translation of the text (synopsis translation)

Note: This synopsis is based on the translation of the Koine or so-called “Greek text”.

In the reign of the new king, who was Lord of the diadems, great in glory, the stabilizer of Egypt, and also pious in matters relating to the gods, Superior to his adversaries, rectifier of the life of men, Lord of the thirty-year periods like Hephaestus the Great, King like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands, offspring of the Parent-loving Gods, whom Hephaestus has approved, to whom the Sun has given victory, living image of Zeus, Son of the Sun, Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah;

In the ninth year, when Aëtus, son of Aëtus, was priest of Alexander and of the Savior Gods and the Brother Gods and the Benefactor Gods and the Parent-loving Gods and the God Manifest and Gracious; Pyrrha, the daughter of Philinius, being athlophorus for Bernice Euergetis; Areia, the daughter of Diogenes, being canephorus for Arsinoë Philadelphus; Irene, the daughter of Ptolemy, being priestess of Arsinoë Philopator: on the fourth of the month Xanicus, or according to the Egyptians the eighteenth of Mecheir.

THE DECREE: The high priests and prophets, and those who enter the inner shrine in order to robe the gods, and those who wear the hawks wing, and the sacred scribes, and all the other priests who have assembled at Memphis before the king, from the various temples throughout the country, for the feast of his receiving the kingdom, even that of Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, which he received from his Father, being assembled in the temple in Memphis this day, declared:

Since King Ptolemy, the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, the son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoë, the Parent-loving Gods, has done many benefactions to the temples and to those who dwell in them and also to all those subjects to his rule, being from the beginning a god born of a god and a goddess—like Horus, the son of Isis and Osirus, who came to the help of his Father Osirus—being benevolently disposed toward the gods, has concentrated to the temples revenues both of silver and of grain, and has generously undergone many expenses in order to lead Egypt to prosperity and to establish the temples... the gods have rewarded him with health, victory, power, and all other good things, his sovereignty to continue to him and his children forever.

The complete Koine text, in English, is about 1600-1700 words in length, and is about 20 paragraphs long (average 80 words/paragraph).